Player Focus: Roma Needn’t Pjanic With The Form Miralem's In

With the first day of pre-season training completed, Miralem Pjanic got into his car and prepared to drive to his house on the coast just outside of Rome. As he pulled out of the gates at Trigoria, his vehicle was surrounded. There were angry ultras on both sides. “Go on! Get out! Leave!” they cried among many other unprintable expletives, the irony being that they were holding him up.  

What had Pjanic done to incur their wrath? Either on ReteOro, Radio Testa Cio, TeleRoma 56, CentroSuonoSport  - you get the picture; one of the many stations that talk Roma 24/7 - or in the local edition of Il Corriere dello Sport, the ultras had found out about an interview he’d given back in Bosnia after the Coppa Italia final in May in which he’d supposedly said that while losing to bitter rivals Lazio pained him deeply he was “happy” that his compatriot Senad Lulic had scored the goal that won it for them. 

Pjanic didn’t say that exactly. Roma posted a clarification on his behalf on their official Twitter page. It turned out that he’d said it “hurt less to concede a goal from an international teammate.” But by then no one cared for nuance. Roma’s ultras were enraged. If there was any consolation for Pjanic, it was that they wanted Dani Osvaldo out of the club more. Even ‘one of their own,’ Daniele De Rossi was a persona non grata.  

On getting home, Pjanic could have called his agent Michael Becker and his father Fahrudin and said: “I’ve had enough. Find me another club.” He’d been inexplicably marginalised by Zdenek Zeman at times during the season and now this. Reasons for starting afresh elsewhere weren’t lacking. Roma’s general manager Franco Baldini, who’d answered the ultras’ calls for him to resign in the aftermath of the Coppa Italia final defeat and then taken up a position at Tottenham, offered a way out. Or so the papers claimed. 

Spurs’ interest in Pjanic was longstanding. “Come with me,” you can imagine Baldini saying. “London’s great. You won’t have fans threatening you outside our Enfield training ground.” But Pjanic didn’t want to go. “I can assure you that I never once thought about leaving,” he told La Gazzetta dello Sport’s Saturday supplement Sportweek.

Roma’s new coach Rudi Garcia didn’t want him gone either. The former Le Mans and Lille tactician had observed Pjanic come through at Metz, making his debut as a 17-year-old against Paris Saint-Germain on August 18, 2007, and then be chosen as the successor to Juninho Pernambucano at Lyon within a year of that appearance. Needless to say he liked what he saw and aside from his obvious talent, the presence of another French-speaker in the dressing room would be useful to help get his message across while he mastered Italian. 

With that in mind, you could perhaps understand why, should it have ever been put to Garcia that it was Pjanic or Erik Lamela, which one would he keep, he’d choose the former and back the club in selling the latter to Spurs, a decision that’d suit Roma considering the money Coco would fetch. 

For any player, knowing that they’re appreciated by the coach goes a long way. In Pjanic’s case, it was restorative. But there was another emotion at play here. Like many of his other teammates, he also felt a need to redeem himself after last season too. “Considering what I’m like perhaps I don’t show it, but my biggest wish was to start over again in a hurry and say to everyone: ‘Hey, Miralem Pjanic is happy to be here and will always give the maximum for whoever has invested in him’.”

Roma invested €11m two years ago and, while he’s had his moments in that time, Pjanic is now looking worth every penny and much, much more. It’s enough to think of the lob against Hellas, one of the goals of the season so far in Serie A and how he stepped up to the plate against Napoli, scoring a free-kick and a penalty at delicate moments for his team following injuries to Francesco Totti and then Gervinho. 

That was a huge performance. “He’s Pjanic, but he seems like Tottic,” wrote La Gazzetta dello Sport to illustrate how the absence of the captain wasn’t felt, not with him pulling the strings ahead of De Rossi and Kevin Strootman. 

He’s a remarkably understated playmaker. Only Antonio Cassano (25) has executed more key passes from open play than Pjanic (20) in Serie A this season. Everything about him is neat and precise. Pjanic has played more accurate passes in the opposition half (277) than any Roma player and only Cassano (6), Pirlo and Totti (both 4) have played more accurate through balls than the 23-year-old (3).

Like a Missoni designer, he threads and he weaves. Only Gervinho (64.5%) has a better dribble success than Pjanic (62.1%) in this Roma team. Italians call this kind of player ‘veneziano’; as so good are they at keeping the ball it’s as if they grew up playing along Venice’s canals where you need great control to stop it from falling into the water. 

Linked with Manchester United in La Gazzetta this week, who claim contact has been made through an intermediary, Mehmed Bazarevic, with a view to making a €30m bid - ask yourself where he’d fit in given Wayne Rooney is keeping out Shinji Kagawa in his position? - Roma are said to be preparing a new contract offer that will extend his current contract, due to expire in two years’ time, to 2018 and raise his pay to €2.8m a year, net. But there’s no hurry: no need to Pjanic.

Instead it’s a time in his career to sit at that café he so loves in Piazza di Spagna and savour the moment. The last month will be one Pjanic never forgets: nine consecutive wins in Serie A with Roma, a record-equalling start to a season, and qualifying for the World Cup with Bosnia for the first time in their history. He’s in the form of his life. Conversant in six languages, it’s a wonder people don’t add a seventh; after all, the one Pjanic is most fluent in remains football and he speaks in poetry, not prose.

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